


Hello From the Otter Side

by Deejaymil



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Dying to prove a point, F/M, Halloween, Jealousy, Love, Prompt Fill, Undercover, otter puns, unexpected angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-23
Updated: 2016-11-23
Packaged: 2018-09-01 17:18:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8632018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deejaymil/pseuds/Deejaymil
Summary: Going undercover is one thing.
Going undercover with their faces painted like woodland animals? Not really what she signed up for. Garcia has declared them 'otterly adorable', Morgan keeps making cracks about fish, and Rossi is far too smug about not having to be painted up for the cause. Her mood is entirely down to how much better Reid looks as an otter than she does.
But, watching Reid doing magic tricks for kids far too young to appreciate just how well the man pulls off 'otter chic', Emily's forced to admit that maybe there's something more on her mind.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [blythechild](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blythechild/gifts).



> He’s an otter. Button-nose, six careful, white whiskers, a swirl of darker grey fur painted carefully around his eyes that crinkles when he smiles. They’d even found ears—more cat ears than otter, she suspects—and plonked them to sit cheerfully on top of his curly hair. And he’s…

“Oh, look at you, you’re otterly adorable,” Garcia had squealed when Reid had appeared in his get-up, and Emily had laughed and made her own fishy puns and then promptly been ushered into Morgan’s clutches.

And now she’s an otter too. Which was _not_ what she signed up for.

“Are otters the only thing you actually know how to paint?” she asks Morgan through the mic hidden in her black coat, tilting her head down so that no one can see her lips move. The paint on her nose itches, one whisker is crooked, and she’s absolutely _furious_ about how well Reid pulls off ‘otter’ when she looks more like some kind of half-baked, wet-looking badger.

“Hey, you want something fancy, go elsewhere,” he responds, his voice crackling, and Emily can hear Rossi laughing in the background even over the ambient noise of the Halloween block party her and Reid are attempting to blend in with. Kids race around them, Reid looks oddly relaxed behind his whiskery mask, and there’s a mermaid covered in glitter watching Reid with a half-smile teasing her lips. “Any sign of anyone who fits the profile?”

Reid glances at her, his glasses sitting low on his nose. One side is very slightly misshapen from the tiny camera imbedded in the arm, leaving them sitting wonkily on his face. She shakes her head, _no_ , for the camera’s sake, and smiles at him. Tilts her head in the direction of a loud congregation of children clustered around a table with covered boxes inviting them to ‘reach inside’.  

Six children taken, only three returned so far, all from different towns in a select radius. Reid’s geographical profile has them hitting here next, and every child in town is here right now. Their unsub has a type. Blonde-haired, brown-eyed, smiling happy kids. Looking around, there’s dozens that fit that type, all happy, all smiling, and she’s determined that not a single one of them will fall prey to this bastard.

“Fan out, keep each other in sight,” Hotch says through their earpieces, and they automatically begin gravitating away from each other. “We need to consider that our unsub may be a woman.”

Fantastic. Women out-number men ten-to-one here, some in costume, some getting involved with the games, some handing out candy from open trunks of cars. Women in groups, women alone, women surrounded by shrieking monsters and heroes and ghosts. Throat tight, nerves tighter, she weaves through the crowd, glancing back occasionally for the familiar tall sight of her ottery partner, his eyes dark and on her both times. Worried.

The last girl taken had run for her mom. She’d made it.

Mom hadn’t. This unsub isn’t afraid to be violent to achieve their ends, and nor are they afraid of the crowded city hall just a heartbeat away from the crime-scene. The watchful eyes of an easy hundred adults isn’t going to deter them here either. They’re reckless, disorganised, reactionary, unpredictable. Him. Her.

Whichever they are, Emily’s done with their shit and ready to see an end to this. Heavy against her side, her gun in a hidden chest holster promises that. Reid’s wearing one too, although he didn’t say where and she didn’t ask, despite not seeing the tell-tale break in the line of his jacket to hint to its location. _Ankle holster,_ she guesses, scanning two women standing on the outskirts before glancing back to Reid.

And not seeing him.

Heart thumping twice in a skip of imagined panic— _tha-thump_ —she reaches up and knocks her fingers against the mic as though scratching her throat. Three times. _Tap tap tap._ Silence for a moment. She turns, rocks back onto her heels, smiles at a brightly coloured superhero as he bounces past whooping, and sucks in a breath flavoured with the sharp-bite of the fall air and the knowledge that their job can go wrong even when surrounded by laughing children and music and fun.

“Seven o’clock from your current position,” Hotch says suddenly, his voice clear and familiar and sending a thrill down her spine at the expected-unexpectedness of it. “Move slowly towards him. He’s made possible contact.”

Of course he has. Only Reid, when left to his own devices for _two minutes_ while dressed as a goddamn otter would manage to unerringly find his way to the single serial killer in the locale. She’s not even surprised. Impressed, a little bit, but not surprised.

Weaving around a gaggle of cats and white-haired princesses and ducking a man dressed as a tree with candy dangling from his branches, she rolls her eyes at a whistled _hey pretty kitty_ aimed her way. Knee-capping him would probably be included in the shortlist of things that weren’t supposed to happen tonight, given to her by Rossi, who’d included _no fishing_ and _no woodland shenanigans_ in there, whatever that meant. She suspects that Rossi’s kind of woodland shenanigans are _not_ her kind of woodland shenanigans, or Reid’s any kind of shenanigans, or even the kind of shenanigans that are legal in most states.

Reid’s easy to spot, even if her eyes didn’t automatically find him hunkered down by the ‘Table of Gross’—of course he is—half a smile traced on his black-painted and fanged lips and not a hint to his true purpose in the easy twist of his fingers as he makes wrapped sweets appear from a closed fist. The three children around him are wide-eyed, delighted, and two of them fit the victimology to a frightening tee. The third could too, but Emily can’t tell what colour his hair is under the over-sized Viking helmet propped jauntily on his head that slips down every time he laughs at whatever Reid is saying. The mermaid watches, standing close enough to Reid that when she moves glitter dusts the dark shoulder of his coat and glimmers in his hair.

Emily slips into the shadows of a tree, leaning back against the bark with every muscle ready to move and her arms folded in a casual _totally not resting my hand on my gun_ position, watching them. A little girl laughs, hands over her mouth, blushing red, and Reid leans forward and makes another sweet appear from her ear before offering it to her with a shy kind of smile that Emily wryly thinks that she’s about eight years too young to fully appreciate. The mermaid seems to appreciate it just fine, her hand dropping to his shoulder and flicking at the glitter. Reid glances up at her, still kneeling to talk to the children, his eyes calm. Too calm. Emily narrows her own.

There’s a flicker of movement, a crowd moving between her and her partner, and she almost snarls at them in a fury. In a heartbeat, they’re out of the way, the mermaid is kneeling too, and the boy is putting the Viking helmet on Reid before reaching to the mermaid for a hug. Dark hair. Dark hair, the same as the mermaid’s, and the woman reaches out to trace her fingers along Reid’s jawline in a teasing, promising kind of touch.

Emily ignores the kick of _something_ deep in her belly, something that’s not so much uneasy about the woman’s proximity or her touch, but darker and sadder and whispers that there’s a longing hidden behind Reid’s painted face that she can’t ease. She ignores all that, and the twist in her throat, and instead watches his eyes as he laughs, tips his head forward, and catches the helmet, giving it back to the shy boy with a flourish.

And his eyes aren’t on the mermaid at all, but the woman standing behind her. The mermaid looks disappointed, taking her son’s hand and letting herself be tugged away, and Reid moves towards the watcher. The blushing girl is between them, uncertain, eyes flickering from Reid to this new woman. In the long frozen moment as Emily begins to start forward, the smile vanishes from Reid’s face and Rossi barks _“He’s got her, go go go!”_

The woman darts forward. Her hand reaches for the girl but Reid has her, scooping the screaming child up in his arms and turning his back to their unsub, using his shoulder to roughly check her in the chest. She staggers, winded, turns and runs. She’s quick.

Emily is quicker. She bolts past Reid as he puts the girl down, mouth open and shouting something after her, and she knows he’s fighting twin desires of staying with the now hysterical child or chasing her, but there’s no time to think about it. “FBI, get down!” she hollers at the fleeing unsub, along with, “Get out of the way!” to the crowd surrounding them. They hurtle a fence into a field and Emily’s catching up on her, gun in her hands now that there aren’t innocents in her line of fire. Black shapes move around them indicating that her team is closing in.

The woman slides to a stop, doubles back. Emily remembers vividly Reid regaling them all with the statistics of the number of police officers who fumble the shot in the panic of the moment when finding themselves too close to a suspect turned violent. She doesn’t fumble the shot, noting calmly the silver glint of a blade in the woman’s hand and the terrifying quickness of her advance, but she doesn’t have time to aim either. The shot hits home but not true, and it doesn’t stop her.

_Fuck_ , Emily thinks, ears ringing and eyes locked on the blade as it swings towards her. _Sorry, Hotch._

Paperwork from this is going to be a bitch.

Morgan’s voice kicks in from some long-held, treasured memory. Teaching them all self-defence, picking on Reid and JJ especially until the two of them were sweaty, bruised, and exhausted but able to stop a punch. Remembering vividly the smile on Reid’s tired face when he’d watched her put Morgan on his ass after, Emily cocks her arm up and back and takes the blade across her elbow instead of her face, lashing out with her foot to give herself some space. There’s another crack. _Gunshot_ , Emily registers, stumbling, her own weapon warm in her hands even as the butt grows sticky and wet. The woman drops. This shot was true.

Turning, there’s an otter behind her with his gun in his hands and his mouth open in what—without the face paint—would have been a terrified grimace. With the face-paint, it’s almost a snarl. She studies the fangs Morgan had carefully painted on, holsters her gun, and says, “She has a knife, watch out.”

Reid looks at her oddly, and Emily decides she should probably sit down. Woozy, giddy, and she turns her arm to look and is numbly unsurprised to note there’s a bit more blood than what there should be. Hands on her arm, on her, helping her sit down, he uses his scarf to press against the red and she studies where sweat has traced pale lines through the black fur on his temple. She remembers what happened after the self-defence lessons. Remembers him approaching her in the parking lot, wiping dirt from his chin, close to him, kissing him. The first time. Not their last.

“That was stupid,” he’s snapping. “You were in significant danger pursuing her on your own—two seconds and I would have been after you, you should have _waited_.” His fingers still on her arm, bloodied now, and she reaches with her good hand to wipe red from the silver of his ring. Hers is just as gross, just as marred by their job.

“I knew you’d be right behind me,” she says, closing her eyes against the thump of her head and leaning against him. Warm and solid and familiar-scented, she can hear Rossi— _we’re going to need a medic, we have an agent down_ —and Morgan— _goddamn it Prentiss, half-cocked, stupid_ —and Reid— _it’s okay, it’s okay, love. I’m not mad, just scared. Shh, shh_ —and realizes there’s a burn behind her eyes that’s only eighty percent because of the throbbing pain of her arm and shock of her injury.

There’s glitter on his shoulder, his heart is beating against her back, his lips to her hair, and she wonders if he regrets this.

 

* * *

 

“You,” she begins, as soon as he steps into the hospital triad room where she’s been getting stitched back together, “told the doctor that you’re my significant otter. What the fuck, Spencer.”

He beams in reply, his face-paint still relatively intact and hands clean now, although he hasn’t rolled his sleeves back _quite_ enough to hide the blood speckled up them. “Well, you are,” he says seriously, moving over to examine her arm critically. “These stitches are minutely irregular. Who was your doctor?”

“Not you,” she reminds him, pulling it away. The limb obeys, sluggishly, still numb from whatever they’d pumped it full of. And her face is still itchy as all hell, the paint cracking and peeling. “Stop that.” A frustrated glance is his reply as he reaches for the roll of paper towel next to the bed, wetting it carefully. She watches his fingers on the towel, remembers his longing smile at the children around him and his arms around the girl, and says as he returns and begins daubing at her face, “Do you regret this?”

“You trying to keep me out of harm’s way and getting hurt yourself?” he asks. “Which, by the way, the only reason Hotch isn’t putting you on desk duty for is because he knows that you’d be that stupid for any one of us, not just me.”

“Marrying me,” she says instead, her voice cracking, and the warm-wet towel pauses around her chin and lowers, black and streaky with the face paint he’s cleaned from her mouth. “Just… us.”

Silence. He stares at her, then he stares at her chart. “What painkillers are they giving you?” he asks instead of answering her question, reaching for it. She smacks his hand with her good one, knocking it away, and he catches her fingers and _clings_ like something in him is breaking. “That’s ridiculous. You’re being ridiculous. What the _hell_ brought that on?” His voice is cracking, shrill, and she winces and realizes she’s triggered his never-gone-only-hidden insecurities about not actually deserving any kind of love.

“Spence, Spence,” she says, tugging her hand free to catch his jaw and turn him to face her, feeling his pulse hammering against her palm and his breath hitching. “Hey, stop. I’m sorry. I just… I… the kids. Playing with them. That’s what you _should_ have had. Should have.”

_He’d be two now._

It sits between them. Memories of another hospital room, another long wait, another pattern of blood on his sleeves. Something else lost.

“You with the children,” she says finally, and he twitches before folding himself against her, hip to heart, mouth against her shoulder and shaking. Lashes brush against her neck in a butterfly touch, damp and quick. “I was… jealous.”

“It’s not your fault,” he murmurs, the words vibrating into her skin, and the memory clamours louder. The thrill of realization. The agony of waiting. The terror of waking to red sheets instead of blue, the sharp-hurt twist in her body, the fear in his eyes. The frantic drive there. The silent drive back. A tiny, heavy burden.

_Two years old, and his hair was dark._

Everything lost. Lost long ago, not just then, when a stake slammed into her gut and took more from her than she’d known at the time. More from him, although he didn’t know it either.

“I’ve never regretted you,” he says finally, when the pain recedes and lets them breath again, together still. He leans back, eyes intent, even behind the otter-mask still painted across his thin face. “And I never will. I love you.”

“Up for visitors?” someone calls through the door—JJ—and Emily presses back against her husband, uncharacteristically needy in this heartbeat of time. Spencer looks at her as she nods, tilting her head back for one last kiss before visitors break this frozen moment.

“I love you too,” she says, and puts her regrets behind her. Her jealously and their shared pain.

Keep moving forward.

Always.

**Author's Note:**

> **Edited August, 2017.**


End file.
